Tuesday, October 20, 2015

No more leaks and no more speculations. The newest HTC Android device - HTC One A9 was officially presented today, at the HTC #BeBrilliant Launch event. Although it's hard to predict the future of the One A9 by looking only at the hardware specification, the device itself is described by many as controversial due to middle-end Snapdragon 617 SoC and iPhonish design. Is it justified? I'd say - NO.

First of all I'm still using "old" HTC One M8 as my daily device. I've never had One M9 and being honest I never "really badly wanted" to have one. In my opinion M9 has a great hardware but the design is a step back to the M7 days. With the M8 it was different. I literally felt in love in that piece of metal uni-body art ever since I touched it for the first time. This love continues, even tho my M8 looks like after one year of a high mountains climbing trip. Surprisingly, even the "C" letter detached from the back and lost somewhere. So it's just "H" & "T" now. But I still love it.

With the One A9 I feel like I could possibly use it as my next Android device. Even if the hardware may seems worse than One M9 is equipped with, my general opinion in that matter is simple: if you can't see a real performance difference in a real life operations between two devices, go for the one with a better design.

In my opinion Snapdragon 617 SoC is more than enough to satisfy 99% of customers. It's enough to handle newest games and it should generate much less heat than infamous Snapdragon 810. That means it will also throttle less. With AMOLED display it should find new fans among Samsung users too.

"The Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 617 processor with X8 LTE combines a fast and powerful octa-core CPU with integrated Snapdragon X8 LTE, full 1080p support, and dual-ISPs, designed to deliver the next high-end experiences." - link to Snapdragon 617 specs page.

The overall hardware specification doesn't look bad on the paper and I can't wait to see how One A9 behaves in real.

About the "almost iPhone design" argument - yes, it's true that it does look like an iPhone. Yes, it's true that HTC was first with such design. The question is - does it really matter? HTC One M9 design was unique and awful (sorry to say that). HTC One A9 design is not as unique, but it just looks good. It doesn't bring any innovation, but I'm sure it will find more supporters rather than the M9 design.

Unlike many of my friends I'm pleased with what HTC presented today. As a HTC One M8 owner the One A9 sounds like a nice upgrade option to me, the first good looking phone after the One M8.

You can find more details about the HTC One A9 on the official page - HTC One A9.

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Monday, October 12, 2015

This method is an official one, recommended by the HTC Technical Support Team. Finally we have some alternative to the old myth related with re-calibrating the battery by removing the batterystats.bin file from /data/system location, as it has no impact on the battery life.

So if you're having some problems with battery life, for example it rapidly or erratically discharges (the battery indicator says 18% left but then suddenly, 5 seconds later your device is OFF) this procedure should help, as it clears all battery stats, coordinates and normalizes charging. At least HTC Technical Support says that :)

The procedure is simple:

Make sure that Fastboot option is disabled in Power settings.

Turn off your phone.

Plug phone into HTC charger and charge for two minutes or more.

While charging, hold down volume-up + volume-down + power button and continue holding. Phone will turn on and off repeatedly every 15 seconds or so while continuing to hold all three buttons.

Keep this going for 2 minutes, then release all buttons when phone is ON.

Now, let phone charge fully normally (with phone either on or off) and battery level reporting, charging and battery life should be normalized.

So... have you tried it? Did it help? Let me know!

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